


Tulips

by dragonflythemuse



Category: One Piece
Genre: (mentioned slightly), A lot - Freeform, Blood, Death, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:40:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26223526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonflythemuse/pseuds/dragonflythemuse
Summary: Tulips had always been symbolic to Law until he falls for someone he shouldn't. They become his curse.
Relationships: Smoker & Trafalgar D. Water Law, Smoker/Trafalgar D. Water Law
Kudos: 16





	Tulips

**Author's Note:**

> I had an idea so I sat down and I wrote it and this is it. This is literally a brain dump. Take it as you will.

Trafalgar Law had an appreciation for tulips. They were beautiful in their shape. They looked sturdy with the way the petals hugged each other safely, but when you looked more, they became soft, fragile, and sensitive. He liked that they stood for a type of love and confidence that could help build a person. Maybe to be as sturdy as a tulips shape. In a way he related to the flora, appearing tough on the exterior, but on the inside, he was quick to wilt and decay. It’s a feeling he had felt ever since his parents were killed. It’s stuck with him for the past twenty years. 

Cora tried to alleviate that feeling, and for some time, he really had. Donquixote Rosinate had helped him feel something. Helped him feel strong. Cora was another petal in his tulip, holding him in place and making him feel secure after he had lost so many. Yet, like everything else in his life, one of his petals was ripped off of the budding flower. He felt it every day. 

Ever since he was younger, tulips had been his favorite flower. He didn’t believe there would be a day he had such a disdain for them. 

It was at Punk Hazard after he was locked in a cage with marines when he began to realize he hated them. Once they had gotten out and began to devise a plan, Law went into a small coughing fit. He looked into the crook of his arm, where he saw a yellow tulip petal, crumpled and spattered with blood. Seeing it on his jacket almost sent him into a frenzy. 

He remembered reading about the mythical Hanahaki disease in books when he was younger. He remembered thinking it was a weird phenomenon, but in a sense he also liked the romanticized idea that your lungs would burst with blooming flowers upon developing feelings for someone. 

He didn’t think it would be real. He truly believed it to be a dumb fairy tale he would hear, where a princess would fall for a prince and cough up a flower petal every now and then. But here he was in the corridors of a laboratory, coughing violently, blood and tulip petals scattering the floor. 

That fucking marine. The more he helped Law and the Straw Hats, the bigger the tulips bloomed in his lungs, suffocating him and making him choke on the tight flowers. And when he fought on his behalf in the S.A.D. room… fighting Vergo, the man who had inevitably ruined Law’s future of happiness with Cora. After he killed Vergo, he choked, full tulip heads plopping on the floor below him. 

Separating didn’t make it any better. If anything it didn’t seem to get any worse, but whenever he saw the Marines, he was hoping the Vice Admiral of the G-5 would be upon that ship, making his heart beat faster, making him choke on the flowers more violently. 

He was wrong. The Straw Hat’s doctor looked at him and his blooms were growing bigger and bigger. Soon, they would take over his lungs, drowning him in the affection he knew he would never receive. Suffocating him with the love he had never been able to give anyone in fear of his heart and trust being squeezed to the point of mush. 

He had dreamed many times of Vice Admiral Smoker since Punk Hazard. The way he would look at him with a light of humor in his chocolate eyes whenever Law had an idea. The way he would listen to Law’s plans and ideas regardless of what the Straw Hats wished to do. Law appreciated a man who wanted order. 

The way Smoker fought for him to get his heart back from Vergo, willing to weaken himself for the sake of his plan. The way he was willing to get hurt. Deep inside, Law knew it was personal for Smoker. He had been deceived by Vergo ever since the white haired man had joined the marines. He was disgusted, angered, saddened. 

Law wanted to help him. Law wanted to make him feel better because he understood what it meant to be deceived by Vergo. It was personal for him as well. 

It became more personal when he found out Smoker nearly died at the hands of Doflamingo. He was ready to die willing to protect him and the Strawhats, giving them more time to get moving. He was willing to die as a witness to the inhumane production of the S.A.D. fruits. He was ready to die for his beliefs. He was ready to die for Law. 

In many of his dreams he would be soothed by the feeling of large muscular arms wrapped around his thin frame. He was comforted by the calloused hands that rubbed his back, capturing him in the warmth of Smoker’s body. He wished so badly he could feel the lips of the Marine in reality, but he had to settle for his dreams. That was the only relief he ever had. 

It never took long for it to turn into agony, waking up to the feeling of flowers sprouting from his lips, urging him to cough them out. The tulips were no longer yellow. They were a crimson red, stained with the blood that was suffocating him. 

He had thought about simply removing them, knowing that that was the only way to save ones self from the cursed blooms. But he had thought about how all affection he had ever shown was torn out of him, just like the flowers would be should he remove them. The only other solution was Smoker returning the feelings Law had, but there was no sure way he would ever find out. He simply couldn’t go to a Marine base and ask for him. There was no way. 

He no longer wanted to feel emotionless. The love he felt for Smoker was overwhelming. And although he was in pain, it was an emotion he would prefer dying to. He didn’t want to stop feeling love. He didn’t want to stop loving Smoker. He didn’t want to stop feeling what he felt because while it was killing him, it gave him this sense of euphoria that he had never felt.

That’s when he found himself in a field. Bepo was lying next to him, attempting to stop himself from crying. He hated to upset his best friend, but the bear understood. While minks didn’t develop Hanahaki, the painful love Law was going through was something that couldn’t be cured, flowers or not. Losing his love and feelings was something he knew Law never wanted to go through again. 

He had pity for the human. His life had forced him through things no one deserved to go through. And it made him so upset. It made him so upset that Law would go through this, so he offered to at least give him company. 

Law didn’t want to die alone. And Bepo would offer him any relief he could, even if he would cry in the end. He at least had the other Hearts to love him. He knew that nothing could fill the empty holes that have been punched into his abused heart. 

It made sense that Law was ready to let his blooms take over. It made sense that Law was ready for the flowers in his lungs to become one with the earth again. It made sense that Law was ready to die. For a 26 year old man, he had been through so much and he felt nothing was redeemable. 

Bepo watched the tired face of his beloved captain as he smiled at the clouds. It brought him some sort of ease seeing Law happy even though his breathing was nothing close to steady or stable. 

“Bepo,” Law said, voice raspy against the flowers pressing his windpipe. “Thank you for loving me.”

The bear turned to look at Law, whose eyes were closed as tears rolled down the sides of his face into the grass. His chest had stopped rising and falling. He was no longer coughing. He was smiling and at peace. He had accomplished what he wanted all but one thing. 

In his final moments, he hoped Smoker would find out somehow. He would find out that he died. He hoped he would feel something about it. Some sort of grief or mourning. Of course Law would be thinking about Smoker as he was dying. He couldn’t help it. He was in love with him. He would think about Smoker as he died, regardless of if it were his flowers that killed him.

In the end it didn’t matter. He knew he would soon be sprinting to get back to Cora, to hold him, to tell him that he brought down Doflamingo, to tell him that he did everything he could for him. And he was ready for it. 

Once his final breaths left, he ironically found himself loving tulips once more.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been going through shit so I put it all into Law and Smoker so here we go.


End file.
